In the past three decades there has been enormous progress in identifying the essential role that nonlinearity plays in physical systems, including supporting soliton-like solutions and self-trapped sxcitations such as polarons. during the same period, similarly impressive progress has occurred in understanding the effects of disorder in linear quantum problems, especially regarding Anderson localization arising from impurities, random spatial structures, stochastic applied fields, and so forth. These striking consequences of disorder, noise and nonlinearity frequently occur together in physical systems. Yet there have been only limited attempts to develop systematic techniques which can include all of these ingredients, which may reinforce, complement or frustrate each other. This book contains a range of articles which provide important steps toward the goal of systematic understanding and classification of phenomenology. Experts from Australia, Europe, Japan, USA, and the USSR describe both mathematical and numerical techniques - especially from soliton and statistical physics disciplines - and applicaations to a number of important physical systems and devices, including optical and electronic transmission lines, liquid crystals, biophysics and magnetism.

Inhalt

I Mathematical and Statistical Aspects.- Linear Chaos.- Second-Order Perturbations for Solitons.- Deformation of Solitons in Random Media.- Nonlinear Wave Propagation Through Disordered Media.- Nonlinearity and Disorder in the Statistical Mechanics of Integrable Systems.- Classical and Quantum Mechanical Analysis of Order and Chaos in the Discrete Self-Trapping Equation.- The Nonlinear Schrödinger Equation on a Disordered Chain.- Dynamics of Sine-Gordon Soliton Interactions with Impurities.- Chaotic Dynamics of Nonlinear Schrödinger Soliton Interaction with an Oscillating Impurity.- Modulated Dark Soliton: Features of Creation and Propagation.- Dynamics of a Stochastically Perturbed ø4 Model.- On the Threshold of KdV Soliton Production.- One-Dimensional Localization and Wave Propagation in Linear and Nonlinear Media.- Annihilation of Topological Chiral Solitons.- On Some Probabilistic Problems in the Theory of Quadratic Operators.- Superexponential Damping of Mean Field Propagating in Randomly Inhomogeneous Medium with Anomalously Large-Scale Nonuniformities.- II Physical Applications.- Nonlinearity, Disorder, the Spread of Neolithic Farming, and the Origin of the Indo-European Languages.- Role of Disorder on the Dynamics of a Nonlinear Model for DNA Thermal Denaturation.- Nonlinear Dynamics in a Double Chain Model of DNA.- Energy Transfer in ?-Helical Proteins by Fermi Resonance.- Chaotic Dynamics of Fluxons in Large-Area Josephson Junctions.- Soliton Dynamics in Tunnel-Coupled Fibers with Variable Coupling.- Instability of Solitons and Nonlinear Waves in Liquid Crystals.- Phonons in Disordered Anharmonic Solids.- Two-Sublattice Solitons in Hydrogen-Bonded Chains with Dynamical Disorder.- Phase Transition in a Kink and Dynamical Structure Factor of Quasi-One-Dimensional Antiferromagnets.- Layer Disordering and Optical Properties of a-Si/SiO2 Superlattices.- Modulational Polarization Instabilities and Disorder in Birefringent Optical Fibers.- Pattern Formation in Nonlinear Physical Systems with Characteristic Electric Properties.- Index of Contributors.